If he’s in the right (wrong) kind of mind-state at the time, he might be likelier to mash all of them together into his description, not realizing he’s mixing up lifetimes and experiences into a mental singularity.
Tommy Hangar, while late-night dusting,
absentmindedly turned on the TV to a ‘breaking news’ report about some disaster
in Kabul. She paid it little mind—it was just for background noise, after all—until
she heard the magic phrase, “Alcor the Dreambender,” and then suddenly she was
Very Invested in this cover story. Tommy dropped the Everlasting Handheld
Dustmop (also known as a rag with a bunch of spells in it in order to make it
hardier and better at dusting) and stared for a moment before she recovered her
wits.
“Hon,” she called out, easing onto
the couch like she was afraid it might bite, gaze focused on the screen on the
wall showing a couple of well-dressed reporters. “Hon, you want to see this!”
“I’m in the bathroom!” Filara’s
voice was muffled by the door and distance between them. Tommy reached out with
one finger and slid the volume up on the television unit.
“…see,
the damage to the city was located in a somewhat economically depressed sector
just east of the main downtown center. It seems to have started in this block
of rented townhomes, as you can see from the aerial shot provided by first
responders to the scene.”
“Then hurry pissing and get out
there, you want to see this!” Tommy yelled.
“It’s a number two!” Tommy heard,
but shortly after there was the sound of the toilet unit being flushed. Tommy
leaned forward, her elbows on her legs, and stared at the devastation depicted
even as the news anchors described it.
“Shockwaves
were reported at 3:26 local time to a nearby fire station from a location
nearly a kilometer away from the epicenter. Shortly after, several buildings
shook as though an extended earthquake event was occurring. Pedestrians were
thrown from their feet, and some were crushed under collapsing walls that were
torn apart by the force of the blows exchanged between two demonic forces. As
we said earlier, one of the two demons was positively identified to be Alcor
the Dreambender.”
On the screen, buildings were
partially to fully collapsed the closer they were to the epicenter, a partially
still-standing block of townhomes. One of them had a hole in the roof, from
what Tommy could see before the view faded back to the two anchors, faces
stern. Down the hall, the bathroom door opened.
Lionel insists that experience in the workforce is character-building and necessary and his children are now old enough to see about getting summer jobs at the very least.
Dipper insists that getting a part-time job flipping burgers or folding clothes is stupid, he’s Alcor the Dreambender, he’s got unfathomable knowledge and power, he doesn’t need character.
So, we all love Return, Rewind, Rewrite,
right? Like, really love it. It’s a great story.
We have to admit, though, that it takes a
lot of coincidences for it to work. While we can easily forgive this for the
sake of the narrative, it does also make room for quite a few ‘what if’s.
What if Lionel never found that very
special book at an auction that one time?
So, here: Five other ways Dipper Sterling
could find out he was Alcor the Dreambender.
Dipper looked at the tiny body on the table and wondered
what he should call it.
“Meat sack” was perhaps the most appropriate term for it but
that phrase was… coarse. Dirty. Tainted.
No. This body had a far greater purpose in store.
(This is a bad idea.)
“Creation?” Technically true as well but that was way too
mad scientist for his taste. “Simulacra?” Nope, too ethereal sounding. “Meat
puppet?” Nope, that was even worse than meat sack. “Golem?”
Hmmm. Now that was
closer to the truth.
(You know better.)
There had been magic, copious and quite frankly ridiculous
amounts of it, magic on a scale that humans wouldn’t be able to wield for at
least another two centuries and even then only with the latest in magitech. But
in the end, it had come down to blood, earth and words.
Earth from below the floorboards under the man’s feet, earth
that the girl sprang from.
Earth from Gravity Falls, the place that he was bo- well,
one part, the most important part in this case, was born from.
Blood from the man frozen in time, hand outstretched
clasping only air now. Blood from the girl, too tiny, far too tiny. Blood from
them both to bind him to them.
His blood, golden to their red, his blood to bind him to his
creation, to match his creation in time to the girl.
And finally words. Because in his realm, in the seat of his
power, the heart of his realm, Dipper was God, and his Words rang out with
equal importance.
(Don’t get so fucking full of yourself kid, sheesh.)
Dipper considered once again the body.
No. Golem was close but still not right. Because he had done
one better.
Because this body would shit and piss, eat and breathe, cry
and laugh. Because this wasn’t mere clay but muscle and bone and organs and
skin and hair all crafted into being by his will. Because his creation wasn’t a
stagnant doll but a body, a real actual human body that would grow and age, a
body that was missing only-
Him.
His soul.
Fuck.
He’d have to stick with “meat sack”, it made the most sense.
(You’re too old for this Dipper Pines.)
Not that it would matter. In a few minutes he’d be going to
sleep, and waking up anew. In a few minutes he would be someone brand new,
someone clean of his sins.
In a few minutes he would be a brother again.
Dipper felt a pang of guilt at that thought. He still had
some niblings he was still in contact with, his precious stars that were still
so very precious to him, even though there was so damn many seriously he loved Ida but he thought she had been
kidding when she said she wanted her own baseball team and-
(Rambling. You’re rambling.)
It would hurt them, he knew, to leave without warning. To
disappear without saying goodbye. And if it had been anyone else, if it had
been any other child at the center of this deal, he wouldn’t have even begun to
consider this course of action but.
But.
It was Mabel.
(It is a soul who was
Mabel but has also been many other people aside.)
It was his sister.
And the pain his family would feel was nothing, n͖̳̥̪͢ọ͙̖͔͈̥t̘̖̬̣̻h̗̭͓̣̘͎̻͠i͙̪̲̗̖͙n̦͕͙g̷̣̪
like the pain he had endured without Mabel in his life, Mabel by his side
constantly.
(This is a mistake.)
Enough dithering.
(This is not going to work.)
Time to fulfill his end of the bargain.
He took his new shell from the Mindscape and back into
reality, placing it next to Belle, already doing better thanks to Lionel’s
deal, in her crib. Dipper inhaled, placed his lips onto the puppet, and
exhaled.
(Thirteen years later, thirteen years wiser, thirteen years
knowing better, the end of a vacation, and the remains of his handiwork a
sloppy slurry on the ground and in the backseat of a car.)
Thanks to Zoey for waiting patiently for over a year between telling me ‘hey I had this really cool idea’ and giving me basically an entire outline, and actually seeing a finished product.
Thanks to @seiya234 as usual for her beta services, and for her help in establishing the setting and the Sterlings’ home!
“Fun. Yeah. Fun – Belle, do you even remember what happened the last time we went on a fun family summer vacation? You nearly got murdered by a cult and I turned into a demon.” Dipper paused to think, half-heartedly tossing a pair of shorts into his open suitcase, and added, “Well, okay, not so much ‘turned into a demon’ as ‘found out I was one all along and got all my memories and powers back’, but that’s not as catchy. Aaaaand you weren’t listening to a word I just said, were you.”
Now that Dipper was a demon, and he had a reputation to maintain, he felt he needed to look and act the part. Dignified, suave, cultured, with a hint of menace and danger.
There was one slight problem with keeping up that facade, however, and it boiled down to this – once a dork, always a dork.
Oh, he could manage it when he was ‘working’, but it shattered soon after getting home, around people he could trust.
And while Dipper loved playing the violin, which could be highly dignified, a respected and cultured instrument, and he enjoyed playing it for his family, well…he also loved his old sousaphone and no amount of faked dignity could hide it.
Luckily, the triplets liked it when their silly uncle got out the ‘big blorty-horn’, as they called it. (They were four. Mabel thought it was adorable, and so did the rest of the family, they just weren’t as vocal about it as she was.)
They loved his violin, too, but most of the time, it was for soothing, for lullabies and nighttime. The sousaphone, on the other hand, was loud, and obnoxious, and perfect for entertaining toddlers.
Dipper was in the middle of giving his stars their own personal sousaphone concert (with Stan providing backup in the form of sarcastic commentary from inside the house each time there was a pause) when he felt the pull of an unavoidable summons.
backup 